‘Things can’t be going as well as you hoped they would, if Tommy has to find work, helping with the milking.’ Her customer blew the smoke from his pipe in her direction and Maura didn’t dare look up, for her glance would surely kill him.
‘Not at all,’ she replied as she pushed down on the wooden mop handle with all her strength. ‘How would that be?’
Her customer made her wait as he took a long sip on his drink and she pretended she wasn’t waiting for his reply as she swung the mop back and forth, imagining his face on the end of it. He smacked his lips. ‘Well, because Liam hasn’t increased his herd and he was managing very well before. Maybe it is that your man was feeling a bit sorry for Tommy now; like, he wanted to help him out so, because sure, that would be the nature of Liam. He wouldn’t hesitate to help out someone who was in need, so he wouldn’t.’
‘Unlike yourself then,’ muttered Maura as she kicked the metal bucket back towards the bar. She guided it expertly through the hatch, behind the counter and into the back as she looked up at the clock. It was gone four. The children would soon be home from school. Having walked the two miles, they would be soaked through by the time they reached the Talk of the no flamin’ Town, as Maura now called it. Very different from the ten-minute march from school gate to home in Liverpool with their lifelong friends. No longer did little Paddy, Peggy and Paddy’s son, run into her kitchen with Scamp the dog at his heels and she missed him and his impish ways as much as she missed her friends. She’d fed him, looked out for him and guided his mother, simple Peggy. How she wished she could have banged that mop on the wall and called in Peggy from next door for gossip about the antics of the O’Prey boys.
Certainly, gone were the days of worrying about what she would make for tea on a Wednesday night if the money had run out before payday on Thursday, but with that had gone everything else too. Her friends, her life, her sparkle and, most importantly, her status. Here, Maura was an outsider. She heard the side door open and the rumble of feet up the half-stairs to their generous living quarters at the back, and she smiled, a rare occurrence these days: the children, safely home.
‘Well, hello you lot. Yes, I’m fine thank you for asking.’ She tutted and smiled again as she turned to walk into the bar – and almost jumped out of her skin as Harry, the eldest from both sets of twins, appeared before her. ‘Jesus wept, Harry. You near frightened me to death! What are you doing stood there? Why are you not away up the stairs? I’ve left the Cidona on the table and the biscuits; did you think I’d forgotten? They will have eaten the flamin’ lot if you don’t hurry.’
She lifted up her son’s cap and ruffled his hair, then stopped, as she saw a tear run down his cheek.
‘Maura, I’m dying of thirst out here,’ a voice called from in the bar as Maura dropped to her knees to face her son.
‘Harry, what in God’s name is wrong? Tell me?’ Harry held out his hands and Maura’s own hand flew to her mouth. ‘God in heaven, who did that to you?’
Harry tried to speak, but his throat was tight and his tongue thick, no words came. Maura stared at the red weals across the palms of her son’s hands and, as she turned him around, across the back of his legs too. Harry was Maura and Tommy’s clever son. The sensitive, helpful, caring boy who had assumed the role of junior parent since Kitty’s death, whenever Angela let him. Maura threw her arms around him and pulled him into her.
‘Maura!’ a voice roared from the front. ‘Have I to pour my own fecking drink? If I do so, I take it I won’t be paying for it, will I?’
Maura pulled back and looked her son in the eyes. ‘Harry, who did this to you?’ she asked again.
The children attended the school of the Christian Brothers and Harry and the boys were in Mr Cleary’s class, a civilian teacher who made Maura’s flesh crawl. ‘He’s no Miss Devlin, either in looks or nature,’ she had said to Tommy when they had signed the children up at the school.
Harry took in a deep breath and shuddered. ‘Mr Cleary, with his stick.’
‘Why? Why in God’s name would he do that?’
Harry found his voice. ‘I couldn’t say the Hail Marys in the Irish, I got mixed up.’
Maura almost swore under her breath. ‘Here, let me wash the blood away,’ she said, turning on the tap. Harry flinched as she held his hands up under the running water and she heard the inn door open and close again, more voices, more demands for her attention, but she would not leave her son.
‘Wait, can’t you?’ she shouted back. ‘You won’t die of thirst in five minutes!’
The response was a muted grumbling. She took a clean hand towel down from the shelf above the sink and ripped it down the middle. She pulled Harry’s face into her apron and stroked his hair, muttering a prayer under her breath. ‘You brave little soldier,’ she whispered as she kissed the top of his head, inhaling the scent of him. Then, taking each hand, she wrapped it in the cotton, making a bandage. Her son looked up at her, his eyes brimming with a mixture of pain and love. Her breath caught in her throat. ‘You go upstairs now. Have your Cidona and
